001at this time I'd like to call the meeting to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States thank you let the record show that all board members are present so we will move to item B1 Dr crotto thank you madam president uh tonight we start our performances from our wonderful schools and uh Dr assai will do the introductions for this good evening Madam president members of the board it is my pleasure to introduce Dysart ban led by Miss Jordan Mooney [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] one two one two ready [Music] foreign [Applause] president it is that time of year again you had the marching bands going uh and believe it or not they start their season um at home next Friday so it
002is that time of year again thank you Dysart High School thank you Ms Densmore foreign this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on this agenda pursuant to ARS 38431.01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to winning criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and first we have Estelle moraski members of the Dysart governing board I'm Estelle moraski attendance seems
003to be a major Challenge and all of the schools in Dysart School District what have you found to be the main reason for poor attendance what are your plans to increase intent attendance have you considered home visitations by paid Personnel each morning a student is not in school are the parents contacted at least by phone each and every morning their child is absent our response is documented in each student's file do you need to hire additional Personnel for teleponing and follow-up are there not legal ramifications for frequent absences last Saturday at a local meeting I asked the superintendent Tom Horn for suggestions to improve School attendance Mr horn mentioned better teachers as a solution Mr horn stated children want to learn children are bored I'm not certain I agree with his opinions but they need
004to be considered children cannot learn if they are not in school thank you thank you Dr croteau can we have someone from cabinet follow-up yes ma'am we'll make sure somebody calls her thank you so much next we have Stephanie Davis good evening Madam president members of the board and cabinet I am Stephanie Davis for the next few minutes principal of Al Mirage I just want to say thank you to the El Mirage staff parents and Community I hope I don't cry for allowing me to lead them for the past six years the average number of Prince years of principal stays with the school is four I came into the school with the mindset that even though I was responsible for the entire building I was only a guest I always kept in mind that the
005most most of the teachers and families had been there long before I came and would be there long after I was gone that meant I had to have I had to lead changes but respect their experiences I took my role of building leadership capacity very seriously I was fortunate to have the same assistant principal Rick Haney by my side the entire time we built a leadership team of all teachers professionals and classified staff that set high expectations for ourselves and our students we all realize those expectations could be met if we did the right work what we accomplished was beyond what I imagined and I am so grateful for the many lessons that I learned from every single tiger never underestimate those Tigers these staff and students are resilient tough smart and full of Pride
006and heart and they cannot be held back thank you [Applause] next we have Haley Crawford Haley Crawford good evening Madam of sorry good evening Madam president members of the board I actually have a couple of things to speak on first I was the previous 2022-2023 Dysart student representative so I was here I was a very familiar face at this stand I spoke almost every single board meeting I will actually be passing that role down to Braley Ratliff in Valentina Herms for this upcoming term so I will be secretary for the Dysart student leadership and I would like to speak on that real quick Dysart student leadership was one of the best experiences that I could have had throughout my high school and I really got to get into that this summer because I was offered
007a great opportunity from my speaking role at this stand I was able to speak at the Arizona State Capitol on topics that I have that are so near and dear to my heart because of this role it was a scholarship that was paid in full that I didn't have to go back and say I owe you this because they said no we owe you this as the olders of this generation we owe this to you as a young student that we can help you in your learning experience and that was something that I really did get to do from that experience I was then flown out to Washington DC to also speak on something that I'm very passionate about and then I later formed a club about it so just my whole summer and the
008whole experience and all of the student activism and the opportunities that I've had within the past year alone from my district I cannot express how grateful I am for those opportunities and just to continue to do that through Dysart student leadership and I also wanted to let you know I plan on passing this down through talking to members of my school about it presenting this at student council presenting it here that Patriot Leadership Academy Congress was one of the best things to happen to me and I will be continuing to speak on that because I'm still talking to the members in it and I'm still communicating with them and I'll be going to their National Convention next year in Texas so I just really want to say how grateful I am for the governing board
009for the members of Dysart district for allowing me to do that and for allowing me to have my club and just continue to pursue activism on this level so they thank you very much thank you congratulations Miss Crawford and Miss Davis thank you for your service to Dysart and for all of your time and effort thank you next we will move on to item D1 superintendent update Dr kroto thank you madam president members of the board cabinet guests um great school year we've started off with a great school year we we're in the sixth day of school was completed today believe it or not it's been a very smooth start I would like to do a shout out to all the administrators the teachers support staff students parents for getting this school year off to
010a great start everybody's worked extremely hard across the board in our district and it shows on this smooth start so thank you to everybody it's been a great a great start and 174 more days to go so I'm sure they're going to be as smooth and if not greater so we are very grateful for all that all those groups and again thank you for doing uh all that on Monday we had the opportunity to welcome HR put on a um a kind of a meet and greet for all our guest teachers our substitutes in our district and it was a whole room full at the student services building all our guest teachers came we were able to speak to them thank them as they are in very very valuable part of our team also we
011do not function without our guest teachers filling in the spots when our teachers are have to be absent so it was a great job by HR doing that it was fun to talk to them and and I think they enjoyed that whole day so great job and and great job and thank you to our our subs and our last piece is some great news excuse me um over the summer we put in many of you know or maybe not know the governor had a grant out there for Teacher professional development Grant we did submit for that Grant and we have been awarded 522 000 in the professional development grant program we received that that Grant focuses on the to increase teacher and professional uh or paraprofessional aides our retention rates and to mitigate learning loss
012by providing targeted professional development to those groups for both teachers and paraprofessionals and school leaders so we will be using that money it has two goals we're going to increase the effectiveness of our instructional leaders through coaching and feedback and those things and also our professional learning communities which we have set out to reboot and get going on this campus we plan to partner with Solutions tree we wrote the grant for Solutions tree who puts on all the professional learnings and then three of you went on to that so we we now have money for them to come in and coach and help us out and help Drive these professional learning communities even further in our district so we are very grateful Dr Longoria and a few others headed that project up so she is
013responsible for putting those together and I know a lot of people had a part but she put it together in the end and so thank you and everybody that helped with that Dr Lauren Gloria we appreciate that very much and with that I believe that is all I have tonight thank you we move on to item D2 governing board update okay well I will just say welcome back everybody I hope we had a really great first week and I just want to say thank you to all of our staff and students for giving us a really good start I also want to welcome everyone back but then thank all the administrators and Dr crota for allowing me to come into your schools last week on the first day I know it was a hectic day
014and I really appreciate you allowing the extra visitor and it was always we got great news I think in every campus we went to that everything was moving smoothly lots of smiling faces and you know it's always hard to kick off the first of the year and everybody did so beautifully and again appreciate the opportunity to stop by Miss Davis I just I can't tell you how much of an inspiration you are to not only to me and I'm sure many teachers in this District but you honestly should feel like you're an inspiration to all teachers out there that are in title schools that have heard um and sad or people in general might buy into the mentality of um kids can't learn their their demographic their their family situation whatever um there's there's just
015no way there's too many gods are against them you know there's never going to get to a certain level and that is my biggest pet peeve even the thing I've hated the most about when I hear about people's viewpoints of of education and what children are teachable and moldable and which ones aren't and um title schools have always been my passion I'm I'm very passionate about raising that bar and recognizing the strength in all students regard regardless of their background regardless of where they're growing up I believed in our staff that you get the right people in there with the right mindset and expertise and they can help grow those kids and Inspire those kids and realize their potential even if at home they don't get that inspiration from their particular Family Life they go
016into a building and they know there's someone in there but believes in them and you clearly are one of those administrators and your staff in there obviously jumped on that bandwagon with you and grew that school and grew those kids and you should be so proud of yourself and I I'm sure you are and um you really are an inspiration because there is no there's no excuse for kids who can't move forward again based on their circumstances and you've proved that it's a tremendous loss to lose you I'm hoping that I mean you obviously raise the bar you've got a really hard you know you you've she set the bar pretty high but um again it was that mentality also that you grew within that school and those those teachers and staff I believe it's
017ingrained in them now because of you and it's just going to continue to go up but I just want to thank you so very much for for not giving up on them and for putting everything you had into that school and the staff there and you will truly be missed but thank you so much really appreciate you okay we will move on to item E1 I will move to approve consent agenda items as presented motion made by Crystal Chapman seconded by Christine Pritchard motion carries we will move on to item G1 Dr Cordo thank you madam president tonight we start our school CIP report so we are excited to have two of our schools to present and to introduce our CIP reports is Dr assai good evening again Madam president members of the board it
018is my pleasure to present it is my pleasure to present Miss Jessica Felix who is the proud principal of Marley Park who is even sporting her school colors tonight good evening Madam president members of the governing board Dr crota and cabinet I am Jessica Felix the proud principal of Marley Park I am excited to be here this evening and to share with you all of the wonderful things we are doing at Marley Park our school goals and how our work directly aligns to our district and governing board goals I would like to begin this evening by looking at our three-year data trends for ELA Math and Science as you can see we have had steady growth for the past three years increasing Proficiency in all areas we have been excited about the new curriculum adoptions
019and with the aligned and focused implementation we are seeing our students reach higher levels of proficiency we expect to see gains again this year with the new curriculum and the intentional rollout as the explicit and meaningful training occurs for all of our staff a huge celebration is the growth we saw in our fifth and 8th grade science scores this past year growing proficiency scores close to 20 percent in both fifth grade and eighth grade science our subgroup populations are always an important aspect of our data and we are constantly identifying the needs of all of our students here you can see our data for our subpopulation of English language learners in 2022 we saw a high rate of reclassification moving students to the proficient level in the past year we did not see the same
020level of reclassification at the proficient level but we did see great movement between levels moving many of our students towards proficiency and seeing significant levels of growth in the intermediate level through the next few slides we will highlight our Marley Park School goals our first goal area focuses on academics and as we align this to the district goals of preparing all students with the Knowledge and Skills to achieve College and Career Success we are always looking to grow our Mavericks this year we will be focusing on a three percent growth in ela Math and Science as well as the five percent gain on our Dibbles assessment for our kindergarten through third grade students our action steps for this goal will focus on our work with professional learning communities and our collaborative teams working together to
021ensure alignment of teaching and learning through this we will focus on what our students need using data to make decisions and guide instruction our teams will receive explicit training on specific protocols to use within their collaborative teams as well as differentiated professional development when we support our teachers and their growth they support our Learners in their growth our second goal area encompasses safety and behavior expectations for this goal we are aiming to decrease the number of students who receive multiple office referrals when we talk about this we begin to dig into the data at the student level when we have students that are seen for Behavior interventions through the office referral process multiple times we have to reflect and focus on the interventions that we are providing to these students we have a behavior response
022to intervention team that includes members across campus from all stakeholder groups and we come together regularly to dig into the data and brainstorm interventions and supports that our students may need we look at the tiers of interventions and the people who are in place to support students in club collaborate with teachers families and students to create a plan and action steps for Student Success as we align this goal to academic success as well as the district goal of providing a safe and secure environment for all we know that our students have to be safe inside and outside of the classroom for learning to take place as we work to reach the school we also recognize that celebrating students is key we have around 1100 students on campus each day and we work hard to identify
023students who are following our star Behavior expectations of being safe targeting success acting with integrity and being respectful and responsible we love celebrating them and recognizing all of our star students for their academic and behavior success our last goal ties together are student staff and Community culture Marley Park is a community school and we want this to be reflected in everything that we do over the past years our parent and teacher satisfaction has grown and we want to continue being a positive place in our community and and continue to reflect a satisfaction of 85 percent or higher this year we will continue to seek parent teacher and student feedback on events at Marley Park we will also continue to welcome their feedback and ideas on how we can grow and improve for all of our
024students our goal is to be one of the top schools in the state and we know that we will only get there with the support of everyone working together to keep our focus on students and the families that we serve as you just heard our everyday work is aligned and guided by our goals and some of the action steps behind each this is a graphic representation that helps our staff to remain focused and aligned in everything that we do this helps to guide us and remind us of our Collective commitments to our individual goals team goals site goals and District goals we know that we are here for students and when students grow and learn in a safe environment we are making an impact the first box talks about our collaborative teams and how they
025will plan and determine the needs of our Mavericks while our leadership team works together to plan and determine the needs of our staff next we talk about the teaching the align the alignment student engagement and checks for understanding while we also work hard to align our professional and development for our staff members including Choice sessions so each member of our staff gets what they need and are able to grow we continuously look at collecting and analyzing data where our students and staff are what they need to be successful and how we will adjust to the needs of our everyday students we then use the data to intervene where needed at the individual level and at the team level with our staff and students in the last box that we never forget is we love to
026celebrate at Marley park there are so many wonderful things that are happening and we will continue to work hard to celebrate the big and small successes that we have each day are there any questions thank you so much absolutely do we have any questions I was just going to comment I think it was Marley Park when we were walking by classrooms there was I think it was a kindergarten classroom was practicing how to walk in a line like around so you're already on that one goal that they say that like putting all that work into expectations and behaviors in the beginning is going to save you a lot of time in the long run so that was great to see and then I just wanted to comment that I love how reflective you guys are
027not just in data as far as analyzing it and seeing okay where are the gaps where can we grow but just in in your presentation referring to um like just like staff development or um your events that you hold wanting to get that feedback on like okay how can we grow how can we do things differently differently just all around I think is wonderful so congratulations for your growth too thank you I just want to comment on the whole package I mean the the presentation itself like the actual PowerPoint you've just really made this your own um your outfit matches the PowerPoint it's amazing the level of detail that you've put into this it it's it's very impressive and very appreciated so thank you thank you all right thank you thank you [Applause] our next
028presentation will be from Dysart Middle School principal of Monica curtence good evening Madam president members of the governing board members of cabinet and everybody here in the room I'm Monica krenitz the principal at Dysart middle school and I'm here to present our CIP for the 23-24 school year and I'm going to try this because last time it did the same thing to me it wasn't quite go hey okay all right so our data from last year is not what we were expecting um and we've made several changes on our campus to address our data and our needs but one area for celebration that we have is our azella scores and our proficiency ratings and movement there we had nearly a quarter of our ell students reclassify into the proficiency level and then we made great
029movement from in between the levels and we're really excited about that those gains in language acquisition for our students are going to translate into gains in ela and overall academics for this school year our first goal for this year is um by the end of the 23 24 school year that we will improve our aasa and science scores by 10 and decrease our students in the minimally proficient by five percent on both aasa and science even though the district is looking at other more incremental growth we know that our students have a bit of ground to make up so we went for the 10 goal our second goal for our year is that by May 2024 there will be a decrease in office referrals by 10 percent our Baseline is 459 and our Target is
030414. that second goal is very similar to our goal from the previous year and quite frankly we knocked that goal out of the park our goal for last year was a 20 drop in we had a nearly 40 so really proud of the work that we did there um our third goal is that by May of 2024 our staff and parent satisfaction will be reported by I would recommend Dysart middle we'll reach um 72 percent again that's another incremental goal because we met our goal from the previous year and we're again knocked that one out of the park um so we're really excited to see the continuation there our action plan and our plan to meet these three goals is quite frankly we looked at our data and we completely restructured our master schedule and
031streamlined content areas for teachers with that became a complete PLC reorganization which was fantastically timed with the PLC convention in Las Vegas and we really organized reorganized those to facilitate more standards conversations and results driven conversations we're really looking at the state performance level descriptors and moving into student results and how that translates to kids we will also be implementing instructional rounds this year which is a program for teachers to observe each other and give specific feedback the best way for teachers to learn to grow is to watch other Master Teachers so we're facilitating that program and we will also continue to monitor uh referral and academic data weekly we've increased our parent and Community Family engagement activities on campus for this upcoming year and we're also restructuring our successful house system from last year
032and increasing its campus presence we're generating a lot of Buzz right now about our house sorting that is tomorrow that's where we're going to sort our entire student body into their four houses staff is all on board and they already know what house they're in and then kids and staff are you know they're getting super excited about it but we know that when they're excited about the programming at school that they perform better academically and that's all any questions oh sorry additional supports I apologize additional supports um that we are focused schools so we're really thankful to be working with a lot of layers at the um the district office in ed services and so that's going to be additional walkthroughs targeted training we've got specific training that we've already seen coming up based on
033needs that we've seen on our campus with our new to us teachers and we'll also be getting additional training and feedback for our ESS and El teachers in those areas as well um so really leaning on District supports there to help us and help all of our teachers grow thank you thank you thank you guys quick question just to make sure I'm looking at this correctly um on your data Slide the second one in regard to intermediate for 2122 to 22 23 61.82 to 31.82 percent um what's the discrepancy there just to make sure I understand I'm reading this correctly and understanding it was at a drop or was that we had ones we have students that actually jumped from the one they went from basic all the way up to proficient so we had
034students then our seventh and eighth grade classes that actually jumped to grade levels because of the amazing work of some of our teachers and the discrepancy was just we also lost some students that they were in that 61 percent and they were not with us for the 22-23 school year thank you um I just had some questions regarding the the action plan um can you I think it was on the action plan um as far as yeah decreasing like the office referrals how how do you what is your plan to do that well one of our big plans is we share that referral data out with teachers every week of by grade level and we share that with all of them we actually Incorporated that into our house system last year it'll look a little
035bit different this year um and the way we did that was um if a student it's kind of hard to explain but like if you got a referral I'm out of fifth grade then sixth seventh and eighth grade all got points if that makes sense so we made it kind of we added it kind of into our competition but really truthfully what it came down to was revisiting our discipline flowchart in our discipline Matrix and really cornering like is this a classroom management issue is this a uh or is this really a discipline issue I mean really working with teachers uh Mr Perla this my assistant principal last year is fantastic about talking with students and talking through like choices and avenues and really I say he's truly cognitive coaching with students about making better
036decisions and choices going forward we really truly spent the time building relationships with the kids and the families um our we haven't she's kind of moved into a new role but ernestina Rose go on our campus also she was our family Outreach specialist last year she knows every kid every sibling every cousin Grandma everybody I mean can give whole histories of families because she's been in the community for so long she's an amazing resource and then of course we've got a couple staff members that retired and then now volunteer with us or work as Perez but they were also teachers in the district so and at the same school so we've really we've tapped into those longevity and that Taproot relationship to be able to decrease those and going forward our biggest piece is visibility
037we have people everywhere so we're out in every hallway or out at every lunch come by first thing in the morning you'll see me on the driveway and when it was 118 on the first day of school I was out in the driveway and built again building relationships with parents as they're driving by and with kids as we're waiting it makes all of those little things add up to make big things you also mentioned the master schedule changes can you speak to that just a little bit yeah absolutely so um in last year we had a master schedule where our seventh and eighth grade teams taught both 7th and 8th grade so if they were an Ela teacher they taught seventh grade ELA and youth radioa and for all of the core areas so we
038really looked at that and said let's streamline so we can focus lesson planning and make sure that that's key and that the conversations can be we can really dig into the standards and the scope and sequence for the one without spreading ourselves our teachers too thin and so far it's really worked that gave us the flexibility to restructure our plcs by those content areas so our grades five through eight math are all meeting and those conversations have been so deep right now because they're they can't talk about um you know Little Johnny's late for every day you know or we need to make sure we pick our kids up two minutes before lunch or those conversations are gone it's truly now this is the standard here's the performance level descriptor here's where my kids were
039at last year our first PLC meeting they were digging through aesa data from last year combining that with the scope and sequence for this year combining that with the lesson of the standards for the first two weeks and it was it was amazing um we were all you know when we had all separated out from my leadership team I mean came back and debriefed afterwards and we were just like yes this is this is where we're going and it's good feels really good good thank you I have a question on your action plan there's two things that caught my eye the first one was the house system I wasn't real familiar with that can you go into a little bit more detail on that and then you also talked about increased family engagement how do
040you plan to to get more parents involved they actually kind of go together so absolutely it's built off of the the house system is built off of the Ron Clark Academy we were very thankful to be able to send four four of our teachers this year I'm planning to send a couple more um but it the premise of it is is that every student as soon as they walk on campus has a community has a place where they belong because that's you know for some students they come to school then they don't necessarily feel like they fit in so we have all grade levels separated into the four houses that in the Ron Clark Academy technically has eight but we decided to go with the main four um and so tomorrow they we'll all find
041out what house they go into and then there they'll have we're going to use our advisory time that's already built into our bell schedule to do some of the community building every staff member is a part of a house so they're going to be the students will be able to build a relationship with a teacher who's not giving them a grade um it could be somebody that they again see at you know whether that's lunch duty they might see them in the next year but it's all great so our fifth grade students tomorrow when they get their house that will be their house for the remainder of their years at Dysart Middle School um and then they the purpose of it is that they grow into leaders because it will become student it's student-led and
042student generated um so they're going to be leading that we then took the house system and um because there's the four and there's the four quarters we decided to make every quarter separated out by or kind of sponsored by I guess by a specific house so first quarter is our isabindi house and they are running the they're going to be leading the family um the Fall Festival that we had last year and then really improved it but they're going to add some isabindi pieces to it plus the spirit week and then bringing parents in we've already I've already sat down and calendared other events on campus this year with my family Outreach specialist and my interventionist specialist just to make sure that we already have them all set up and ready to go and then
043which ones we're going to be tagged to a house second quarter is going to be Amistad and we figured their house color is red so we were going to do a spaghetti Bingo dinner because that seemed to fit and all the house of Al Turismo our house sponsor the our staff member leader for that one was really his heart was really like I want to do academic showcase in the spring absolutely if that is where your heart is then then you go for it so anyway so we just kind of we did that and then make sure we've already counted out that we've got them all there and then now it's just getting the parents on campus that's wonderful yeah we're really we're really excited tomorrow if you guys are not busy at two o'clock
044come on by we'll be happy to have you we'll give you a lanyard and we'll give you a card and you can get a house yourself it's really cute um in Walking classrooms today the students were asking me and Mr Perla what how so you guys is in well we haven't told you guys yet you know we'll find out tomorrow I want to be in Reverse okay why um they're super jazzed but we just keep telling them you don't get to pick your house the house picks you so it we're really we're really excited about it and then of course that has really energized our staff um and again I think which is just helping those conversations back in plc's again seeing seeing the teachers they're the camaraderie between them has been even stronger this
045year so really excited great job thank you thank you much quick question sorry um I wasn't sure if Miss Grant was going to go the advisory out I you said advisory hour is it really an hour no advisory period it's periods 15 minutes 15 minutes every day and then we did increase a little bit on Mondays so that we had a little bit of extra time sure to do just that but that's every Middle School we all four middle schools are running on the same bell schedule this year perfect thank you you bet sorry no you're good thank you next we'll move on to item G2 Dr Credo thank you madam president members of the board to continue in our academic Focus which is one our main goal uh in the district I asked Dr
046assai to do a presentation on our academic Focus for the year so doctors say good evening Madam president members of the board again uh it is my pleasure to present on our academic Focus um our academic Focus goals for Educational Services and really our indicators are built off of the golds uh the board's goals Dr crota's goals and then we produce the indicators really the indicators revolve around increasing test scores mandatory data chats with principals adding supports at Focus schools and our PLC process we believe that raising student achievement requires Fidelity to process and also solid measurements the processes we'll be talking about tonight include the implementation of the PLC process really are rebooting because we've tried it before and not seen the gains we needed ensuring Fidelity to the resources and scope and sequence
047focusing on Solitaire one instruction adhering to benchmarks and using them to really identify deficits and opportunities to curriculum Compact and our measurements we're using aligned to our state labeling system our measurements of success are the double ASA azsi and act that's what we're measured on that's what we're going to judge our process on to review the PLC process it revolves around four questions what is it we want students to know really the what the standards how will we then know they know it the how what will we do for those that have an extension which in the past has been overlooked a lot and what will we do for those that don't to this end the board sent all of our directors and our principals and two of our board three of our board members
048to the PLC conference in Vegas we believe that as we Embark in our rebooting of the PLC process that we really needed to ensure that we were all on the same page that we defined success the same way in the past I think for PLC process it's really been focused on what the adults in the system are doing and we've redefined that as we can't have a really as we tier our plc's red yellow and green we can't have a green PLC without that group producing results for students I can be doing all the actions but if I don't if I have the best intent without the impact it really doesn't matter so as we've done this um Miss Hartson and Miss Noble designed with Educational Services a Continuum for our plcs and what success
049looks like this was used by our site by our site leaders to really classify all their plcs and the plcs went and did some self-reflection themselves saying this is where we are no nobody's all red really are all yellow but here we are in different areas and here's our goals for the year here's how we're going to move over so we can do the PLC process better in addition all of our sites have worked with either Mr musee or myself to design a PLC rollout process for the year with goals and what their staff's going to do and how they're going to have accountability for that in addition our district office staff is going out on Mondays to see what is being done with plcs and to look at the feedback that principals are giving
050to their teachers because we know that feedback for students matters but feedback for adults and their system matters as well the next part of our process is adhering to a Solid scope and sequence we build our scope and sequences off the Arizona State Standards we look and build our assessments off that and then we use our resources that we have that we've adopted through our curriculum adoption process our district probably has some of the most detailed scope and sequences in the state this is a sample of the front-facing page so it defines the unit it describes it it gives a timeline and we don't you don't have to be on on every day uh you can be three or four days in between but you shouldn't be two or three weeks behind because we do
051have transfers in our district and if a kid goes from Rancho to El Mirage they should be learning the same thing at the same time so we don't lose ground it also defines our major standards and our minor standards and it also provides the teachers with the assessment so that enables teachers to really plan backwards we had work done on this this summer through summer workshop that we've talked about over 80 percent of our staff actually had input and going back and really examining our scope and sequence we looked at our assessment data from last year and we said where did we really hit it out of the park and where did we not and we were able to make revisions to the curriculum revisions to the assessment to better align them to the state
052test our next process type is to our teaching and learning and what it means to have great teaching and learning and Dysart last year you heard a couple schools mention that they were concerned about tier one we are not going to have that this year we are all solid on what tier one looks like it's defined by the Dysart instructional protocol we trained our teachers on it we trained our administrators on it uh to that end as our TLS program our teaching and learning specialist program was revamped this is our primary coaching tool I do want to emphasize that it's not a checklist I if I see the first five minutes of class I'm not going to get all the checks on the sheet and the sheet isn't about getting all the checks this is
053for coaching I always start by coaching and looking at the objective does the objective align to the standard at the correct level because if I'm not teaching the right thing at the right level it doesn't matter how pretty the lesson is the rest doesn't matter because I'm not learning the right thing at the level of rigor I need to from there we coach we look for checks for understanding which is in the bottom right hand corner do our teachers know when kids leave the classroom daily who gets it and who doesn't because if I'm working on a standard and I don't know 50 of my kids know it on Friday it's too late I've wasted the four days in between I need to know daily what my kids know and then we have active engagement
054and academic conversations and the other two quadrants which overlap the beauty of this is every educator in Dysert can tell you what Solitaire one instruction looks like because that's defined and the reason that's so important you hear me get very passionate when I talk about this part is the research shows that there's more discrepancy classroom to classroom then school to school traditionally because different teachers like you can bring your own art to this there's some scientific things that go into teaching to produce student achievement and we want to make sure all teachers have that the next head of the process is making sure we are also adhering to test prep we teach the standards which are aligned to the test and sometimes people say you're teaching to the test yes we are we want our
055kids to be successful on State Testing when I took my superintendent's exam I wanted to be successful on that as I want my daughter to one day be successful in her nursing exam which she will study for so we teach to the test we look at our standards we look at the test we have Benchmark predictors our Benchmark predictors we should not have been surprised where our double ASA scores were this year our Benchmark predictors for reading were within 10 percent we estimated as a district 36 percent of our kids would pass 46 actually did but we do have time before the last Benchmark in double ASA and our scores should go up because we know what they're low in and we have time to intervene our math we did not do such a good
056job of intervening in our benchmarks predicted 41 of our kids would pass and 41 of our kids passed what this does tell us though is it's more important than ever because our benchmarks are so tight that our teachers and our leaders lead teachers and really being able to dissect those when we get them the times a year that we do and say what do our kids still not get is our curriculum going to address that if not we need to go map that in again which groups of kids don't get it so we can pull small groups um also taking the test tests are different now than when we took them back in the day I had a number two pencil it had to be an nicely sharpened and I filled in one answer for
057each question now kids take the test on the computer they have multiple answers sometimes they have drag and drop they have to fill it highlight things so if I never practice with the test format kids might not know how to do that in addition it's changed the way that questions are asked we have a standard rl2 that asked um it has to do with summary in writing a summary it doesn't say writing a summary it says summarize in the past when I taught English I had kids write the summary I thought I kicked it out of the park or hit it out of the park I'm sorry I'm not a sports person um I thought I hit it out of the park um obviously I didn't either today that same question asked It'll ask which
058of these is the best summary It'll ask which sentence completes the summary what detail best supports the summary so you can see if I just teach it the way I used to by having kids write a summary they could be able to do that I would think they're proficient but it's not the way they're tested so that's why these things are important to us and part of our academic plan for success in students showing proficiency those are our process goals to hit our three percent gains the next is focusing on our Focus schools um when Dysart middle presented they are one of our Focus schools we identified six Focus schools as having less than 40 percent of students proficient in reading and less than 30 percent of T students proficient in math or having a
059new admin team altogether what these schools do is they intensively and I mean intense I was at all the focus schools this week my team was too I felt like I was walking in I either saw Amy Ashley or Dana back there walking out meeting with principals we asked them to file Focus plans the first goal of their focus plan is always solid tier one instruction and how they're going to roll that Dysart protocol out how they're going to hold teachers accountable how they're going to do PD and PD that's differentiated because when I'm doing rounds with the instructional protocol if Craig has a great objective every time he doesn't need to set in professional development and listen to me tell him how to write an objective so we're using our data which is collected
060two at the district level so we can also see if we need to infuse some of those practices within our curriculum the second goal is up to the schools they have goals such as improving systems Improvement in subgroup populations you saw some of our schools classified a higher amount of Els some didn't our ESS population some schools chose to focus there because we do have we are in TSI targeted School Improvement for you for ESF students at some schools our Focus schools include Ashton desert metal Riverview Thompson Ranch West Point and Valley Vista our final lunch pin in this is increasing instructional leadership because we know that next to the teacher the teacher is really makes the most impact on student learning research supports that leadership is the second the principle has the highest second
061highest influence on student achievement so we thought that we really needed to go back and train our leaders you've already heard us talk about training and getting a common vision for what a great PLC is and how that can move that was at our PLC conference in Vegas I also didn't put up there we did a lot of dug into that a lot also at our back to school with our administrators we have revamped and overhauled our teaching and learning specialist program they're meeting more frequently in the district the part I think that's going to really make a difference is in the morning we talk about best instructional practice and how to coach they practice those coaching conversations but in the afternoon we're actually going out in about groups of three or four on campuses
062with teachers who have volunteered to let them practice their skills in their classroom so it'll be on the job it's a learning by doing where you go into the the classroom You observe as somebody goes in to replace the teacher for about 10 minutes the teacher comes out in the hall conferences with the coach and goes back in it's a high-yield strategy and coaching and I believe as an instructional coach if you can do in and out coaching like that that you can coach anything so it's going to be really great to have this opportunity to practice and grow our teaching and learning specialist because eventually we want them to be our assistant principals and our principals we want to create a pipeline of growing our own I didn't add this up here but we
063also have a master teacher program there are two one or two teachers from each school who applied were designated Master Teachers and we are using them for model classrooms I was at Ashton Ranch yesterday Jessica Brill who was a great teacher at Valley Vista she's now at Ashton Ranch opens her class to her colleagues to come in and observe and give her feedback on her best practice so she has to be on that's a lot of pressure because those Master Teachers have to be on all day every day because you never know who's walking in and then they use that to debrief as a method of best practice so hopefully our Master Teachers become our TLS our TLS become our APS and our principals and last we continue training for teachers in addition to sites
064working on the elements of the Dysart instructional protocol and plc's we have gifted cadres for our gifted teachers our gifted training for teachers who are learning how to really raise the level for their gifted students we have a group called the literacy literacy leadership team which is a combination of effort by our language arts specialist and our social studies specialist to really get kids reading more and writing about using those primary sources as they write it's had great success and then our math leadership team who continues to study our new math curriculum how to really implement it with Fidelity and best practice and they serve as role models to their peers I added this because one of the things that we've done under Dr crota's leadership and one of the words I keep hearing around
065the district is focus that our leaders and our teachers feel that we're more focused than we ever have been Kara Sarah included this for her staff it's her goals it's her CIP goals that talk about goal one and academics goal two and referrals goal three with satisfaction but she aligned it nicely to their Mission Vision collaborative commitment Norms that are part of that PLC process and underneath you can see many of the different things we've talked about from feedback with the Dysart instructional protocol to the PLC rollout to RTI and how that really all fits to to promote those goals which are aligned to not only Dr crota's goals but the board schools and I will be happy to answer any questions thank you Dr Sai thank you for this presentation um I feel like
066the past couple of years we've been really focused on our academics we want to say we want to see our students learning we want to get proficient on grade level as much as we can because when students get behind teachers not only are responsible for teaching that grade level content but they got to back up before they can get to grade level and then it just and it's kind of a domino effect so I love the focus on the academics but not just okay yeah yeah we're focusing on it this is the nitty-gritty this is how we're focusing this is you know us studying and seeing okay we need to do something different here's where we're going to start so thank you for that um can you maybe just uh in like a couple of
067sentences just briefly highlight again exactly how the PLC process is going to drive our academic success in a couple of sentence I feel such a challenge for me um I will try my best president um with the PLC process it's focused on looking at in that unit at what are those standards I feel in the past we've kind of given it a a glance and not gone past the semicolon most of my English standards are deeper level and the before the semicolon is kind of at a dok one or two and then it goes on to a three but we only teach you the two so really defining the standards and doing a task analysis of what does it take what are the prerequisites to reach that standard and breaking that down so the teachers
068are engaged in that conversation uh during common preps preferably at elementary it's really easy to get common preps at high school we try diligently to get common 9th grade prep common 10th grade unfortunately when we can't find enough teachers sometimes teachers pick up six fifths and that process becomes harder we are able to do it on our Monday early release which embeds time during the day so as long as time's embedded during the day it's some point for those plc's or sometime teachers have that opportunity so it's defining really unwrapping that standard but then two saying how will we know they know it that day not in creating those common formative assessments or every two days because for too long we've waited till the end of the unit which in English can be three or
069four weeks so really defining how will we know that that standard in real time because like you said if they fall behind it's so much harder to make up but if I know on day two I need to pull a small group to make that up I have that real-time data so creating those common formative assessments as part of that process Madam present I can help her with the one or two sentences um of course you can simply put if you want a sound bite for the professional Learning Community process it's a focus on student learning and not teaching just because we're teaching kids doesn't mean they're learning so we need to measure what they're learning and adjust accordingly so it is a focus on student learning thank you I appreciate that and I've you
070know being in education I've been in plc's and I feel like for the most part it's been this sort of vague idea you know you get together you know okay what do we you know and it's kind of just okay yeah you know everyone hits the surface of it but just taking a deep dive into it and it doesn't have to take hours and hours it's more of a focused conversation like you were talking about I've seen some very effective plc's that work in about 45 minutes you know to go through it I also think being able to you know across the district we do pull all of our music teachers together or all of our all of our Singletons with CTE so I think sometimes when we try to force it at campuses in
071the past it does make it harder if you don't have like content there are ways to do vertical plc's across things but I think we we've really tried to look at how can we create maybe multiple meaningful plc's but it's like you said it's the quality of the conversation thank you and I like the fact that you highlight it can be done in 45 minutes it's not it doesn't have to take oodles and noodles that you don't have to stay for two hours after the Bell just a PLC correctly correct um thank you um and then also I want to just focus this I'd like to highlight the focus on our TLS and our coaching because coaching is one of the greatest experiences but it could also be viewed as an Expendable position for people
072who don't understand education people who don't understand what a coach does why it's important it's not somebody who just goes in and says okay you're fine and then move on so for maybe somebody who doesn't understand the process can you maybe in like 10 sentences I'm sure I'll do 10 sentences and then Dr crota can finish and summarize it in one okay um so our TLS focused primarily on our zero to three year teachers because we know lots of teachers will leave the profession in five years so we want to retain those people they start with training them in the basics from new educator orientation how to access we do so much on computers now that can be hard you know how do I use infinite campus how do I use illuminate how do I
073use my different testing platforms uh then they go into the first two weeks we focus solely on management because I know if I don't have management the rest doesn't matter because I have kids running all over the classroom or that aren't listening um sometimes that's really easy sometimes a coach goes in and says Craig you need you need a quiet system symbol signal um and the teacher does it it's successful other coach will start to engage in a cycle of planning going in and observing and debriefing with the teacher another thing a coach does is really focus on transfer of skill professional development research will show us that about 10 percent of skill is transferred without someone there to support it so we invest heavily in training teachers and different methods in professional development and
074then that coach is there to watch the transfer of skill and provide feedback or reflection depending on the level of skill of the teacher if my teacher is really skilled I can say what do you think you know could have made it better the teacher will come usually my zero to three year teacher you kind of have to dig down and say okay do you think maybe this or this and then you go back and you try it again and the coach is there again and the coach really I believe in Patton well I believe others too impacts the efficacy of our teachers and we know that teacher efficacy the belief that I can do something that I can persevere that I can get it done is one of the highest influences on student academic
075success Dr crota would you like to summarize sure you only get two I I can do in seven words I would say solid teaching practices create successful learning opportunities and that's proven in the research that more solid they are in their in their practices the more kids are going to learn thank you for the presentation um it was very informative and it really just re-emphasizes for me how much of a focus you guys are putting on academics which has always been um very important for me um I also liked that you had the the piece on tier one and that you have from you said you're going to use that I don't want to call it a cheat sheet what's the real name desert instructional protocol the tls's are going to be using that going
076into the classrooms uh the TLs admin also uses it for so there's two ways this is going to be used the TLs goes in and they script by hand and then they go out and they kind of go over their check boxes because it's kind of a hierarchy of how I coach it should never be handed to the teacher like here you got three out of five checks so TLS will use this every visit when they go in wanted to just clarify though that we're going to be monitoring for tier one because I know you've said initially go back to tier one but we are right we're we're just going to make we're going to this is our solid tier one this is our way of making sure it's implemented in the classroom yes okay
077and I appreciate that be because we learned in June struggle school-wide with tier one instruction which was still alarming I still cannot hear that so I'm glad that we're getting plans in place to be able to make sure that's happening and that's one of the reasons member portrayed when you saw the focus schools all of their goal is Solitaire one revolving around education on the dip okay and using it in those schools to really have a rollout plan for it okay and I will say between this presentation and just what I've seen of this this team um there really seems to be a very strong emphasis on academics being in the schools doing all the monitoring and I appreciate it and I really want it I really hope this this um uh not motivation what
078am I looking for sorry my brain is um momentum continues because and now as you and I have known each other a long time my thing is you can be nice and not effective okay now I've got a new one you can thank Dr crowdo because I wrote it down just because we're teaching kids doesn't mean they're learning that's profound that is so true because what I'll say is you can go in and do these spot checks and be in the classroom or and look and say okay yep they've got a PLC scheduled they're doing professional development Mondays you know they're doing all these things just because you're checking the Box doesn't mean it's effective doesn't mean kids are learning so it's really important for me and I'm really inspired by this team because again
079you guys really seem to be driven by being in schools and making sure things are happening but please continue please continue that and go in and measure I mean I don't want to just hear these are the interventions we're using and then we don't find out until the end of the year that kids didn't move the way we wanted they didn't grow as as much as we needed them to or like you had said with your English scenario that you know that's a long time to wait to see whether or not kids get it so I guess for me my takeaway with all this this all sounds good but just having ways that we're doing frequent check-ins to make sure that what we think is happening is is really effective and meaningful and kids are
080learning well I think that's part of the um one of the real benefits of Dr crota's leadership is he has high expectations for us as assistant superintendents as principals for our teachers but also the demand that we support schools in doing that um you know and also we we have great leaders and great relationships who then they don't see it as an obtrusive process but hey I had a principal go I'm so glad you're here to walk I'm like really no really I am so I think our leaders appreciate the support uh because we have a great group of site leaders who want to be better tomorrow than today who are you know they look at their data you know even our top performing school she goes that's not where I wanted to be and
081that they constantly they want to produce great results for our kids for our community and they realize that working together especially in the same direction that we all have this laser-like Focus this year that we're going to get there a heck of a lot faster than trying to do different things all over the board and I think building that collaborative team as well is good because then that way no one should feel uncomfortable or hesitant to come forward and say I need help I'm struggling or you know my interventions aren't working and coming to District staff if they need to and saying how I need that help now better to know now and fix it and feel comfortable asking for it then again end of the year scores come out and then it's too late
082you know thank you for everything you're all doing appreciate it thank you um just want to say how much I appreciate this this presentation all the information that you're providing I know it was mentioned um in here with um the slide for Luke but also in a in one of the cips you know speaking to the attendance piece of it in in reducing discipline referrals um and while that's you know hopefully effective you know that that effort what are we doing for the actual attendance to school um what steps are we taking to improve that each of our sites is really looking at that oh we have the standard letters but we know the standard letters don't always work um so lots of them have less of them have programs that are promoting attendance that
083we're really trying to get out and I'll cite Luke again uh because we just talked about it the other day she has classrooms actually competing against each other to see who gets the best attendance making sure we do call home I have one school that's exploring the idea of house visits I we have to iron out some things there because we also you never want to put your people in Jeopardy and not not that without ever intentionally happen but right you know just the legalities and Logistics of that so we have looked at that we have reached out to I believe uh one of our schools was talking about reaching out and working with their SRO okay to see how they can support us Maricopa County has a Cuts program that we used to use
084however they're only available once a year now so that's not really an option for us anymore when you say it's only available once a year what does that mean like one time per student or know that they'll come and do hearings for us once a year I believe because that's that's the capacity they have gotcha so that used to be a good deterrent but it's not something we have an option for anymore so we need to continue to explore options because sometimes even as a parent when I took the kids through high school just knowing they had to go to an attendance hearing was helpful yeah Madam president uh member Dinsmore we also this is a major part of our data chats that we've had with every single principle so far we talk about attendance
085we talk about chronic absences we're able to run lists of kids we have administrators using their team identifying kids with chronic absences sending letters about chronic absences aligning it to proficiency to show the parents how proficiency lines up with chronic absences and reaching out to explain that you need to be present in order to learn so it is a very huge piece is a huge Focus for us again we talk about it with every principle every principle is targeting it we've sent out announcements district-wide but ever since the pandemic it's okay not to go to school or it's okay not to do that and I and I take this time to urge the community we need people you need people to demand that their kids are in school we will help them learn we will
086get them to where they need to be to be successful but they need to be in our campuses so that is a strong Focus for us and we will continue to do that throughout the year thank you and you know as a parent of a a student with a chronic health condition are we still requiring those chronic Health documents to be submitted if there is a true yes we do medical issue yes we do okay that would excuse them from from The Chronic absences but outside of that though we do have the ability to suspend or discipline in other ways Madam president member Densmore we do look at that the suspending piece obviously is putting them out of school even more I know um so we do have those things with discipline we talk at
087the high school level about losing credits in class after a certain amount so they do have attendance contracts that go out and after a certain amount of absences that the students will lose Credit in those classes so we start to explain to them that in order to pass high school you have to accumulate a number of credits so if you're losing credits you're going to be in high school a very long time and so they're starting to have those conversations a grade school we're talking about retention too we've talked with principals about if they're not here and they're not proficient at grade level we may need to talk about bringing them for a retention that they haven't learned what they need to learn in that grade level and they need to do it again thing
088we asked them to explore with their teachers is having the teachers call home as lots of times if it's a you know if it's a person I don't know calling home it's not as impactful I know when I was in the classroom if my kids were gone for two days I made the phone call personally if you have 160 kids it's a little bit harder sometimes depending on how many absences you have but I do believe that Personal Touch also makes a difference when I call and say hey I noticed Caitlyn was gone today thank you so to piggyback up the absence or attendance issue when I was in high school we had our school district had a truant officer and if you didn't show up to school we had a couple of true officers
089that would roll up and they're nice true and officer cop car and you come to the door hey get along to school is there any possibility of adding something like that in the future Madam president that is that is the cuts program that's put on by Maricopa County and there are so many schools in Maricopa County that that's what Dr assai was referring to they can come and service our district for one time an entire year obviously that does not help to tour absences for one time I have worked with the police Chiefs in both cities to try to come up with a program that will allow us to use some officers as Dr assai said there's concerns about sending our staff to to the doors so we always make sure our staff is safe
090although phone calls don't work so we are in discussions and talking about that on how we can maybe utilize some officers at some time knowing that we can't utilize them every day because they have a job to do too you know their their jobs to keep the city safe and respond to calls so they they're not employees of the district to go out and Chase absent kids but they are very excited and willing to talk through the program and see what we can do and maybe utilize sros um we're looking at every Avenue we can and you know just getting the word out that we need to be in school thank you and I do want to say thank you to El Mirage PD and surprise PD and MCSO for those sites I just cannot
091say thank you enough I know your resources are spread thin but the fact that you're willing to share your officers to keep our students safe and our staff too means a lot Madam president they are amazing to work with so I second that comment and and it's they're very good to work with we are very fortunate as a district to have those Partnerships I have a question for you Dr Tsai you made a comment through your our speech just kidding um that just kidding um that you were talking about having the teachers not wait till the end of the unit the unit to discuss and see if they've got it you mentioned something about actually going over it before making sure that they're understanding it before the end of the unit how how are they
092going to do that are they going to test them give them a pre-test so it would normally what I was referring to when I said that pre-testing is also a good way to do it and then curriculum compacting I don't know if we're quite there yet the part I do think we really have the ability to do working with our plc's is the district makes the unit test so teachers already have the unit test but dividing that up and saying what are the big chunks so if I have a unit that's on addition subtraction and multiplication I would teach I would say I'm going to teach this at the part of addition for three days and then I'm going to give a quiz and I'm going to see who gets it and who doesn't within
093that I should divide it in different ways I might have some kids that tell me three plus five is fifteen because they accidentally multiplied but it makes sense and some kids are just like it's two so there's a difference in mistake I I just missed it I had a problem with the process which is an easy cleanup maybe in Bell work the next day versus I need to pull a small group Henry teach that I would teach the next section on subtraction I would go ahead and quiz on that I might decide to build my common formative assessment on addition that I taught and subtraction so I could get another read on how my kids that didn't do so well the first time did on that and that I might quiz on multiplication the next
094time or all three and then give my unit test so there should be checkpoints along the way I kind of my husband says I get lost a lot when I drive so I kind of liken it to the mile markers as I'm going to California if I see Indio I know I'm on the right path and if I see other places of which my to happen once or twice I know I know that I'm not so those common formative assessments really serve as our checkpoints along the way um and they're really what we should be basing our small group off of or our bellwork cleanup the next day okay because I think that's a fantastic idea if the teachers are doing that because I know you know I'm going to age myself you know 30
095years ago when I was in school um we would have stuff like that in in the classrooms where the teacher would go over the lesson and you know and ask whoever has the answer and throw candy you know oh you got it right here's peace candy or we would have we would line up to the board and the first one to write the answer you know got something I mean it was just stuff like that that made the kids more interactive and they remembered a lot more and that's even to increase I mean um that's kind of that on the spot chat I would call the on the spot check we do it a lot with white boards I actually used to take my math teachers as a coach I would take my math teachers
096into a dance classroom dance teachers give some of the most amazing feedback as do coaches in the world you know they're like no put your point your toe do this and they can watch five different things and if we actually were able to give feedback like that what that you're talking about in the moment that is the best timeline specific feedback it has one of the highest yields I think it's like a 0.84 according to Hattie anything above 0.4 is really good so it's one of the highest yield practices that we can do to increase student achievement all right thank you next we will move on to item G3 Dr kroto thank you madam president members of the board cabinet and guests uh tonight we are presenting to you a dress code presentation I believe
097was asked for back in May I believe April or May that we would like a dress code presentation um and so we are fulfilling that tonight and Mr musee is going to send to you uh some information on our dress code yes thank you Dr croto good evening Madam president members of the board superintendent crota um we have uh an opportunity here to change gears and talk about a different topic and dress code and and this is is really uh for us I believe an opportunity to look at when we talk dress code the whys behind why you have it in place we can look at the current guidelines and practices that we're utilizing in policies we get a chance to assess where we are and this is an opportunity to look at areas that
098need to be improved and also any updates that we need to make within that those practices so I want to start with talking a little bit about some of the reasons why and and establish what are what are the purposes of address code number one when we look at that list we see it's established as a professional professional atmosphere for learning this gives a chance to say what it should look like when we talk about our campuses and wanting to see that atmosphere on a campus of when students come to school the second one you'll see listed there students should dress in a manner that takes into consideration that educational environment the safety help and the welfare of oneself and others and I want to emphasize that that area of safety uh safety to themselves
099could be the types of things that they could have on or they could be a problem um involving whatever's happening at the school but also re I would keep in mind that when you have a tight dress code safety is also I would speak as an administrator it makes it very easy for me to know who belongs on my campus and who does not so there there's elements to that that safety can be a huge element to when we say when there's a dress code in place and then the third one you see is there that a tire that detracts from the learning environment and that could be anything that could be affecting the educational atmosphere or the or could cause it educational disruption so this next few slides you're going to see actual information
100that comes from the student and parent handbook these are contained on pages 26 through 28 of our of our handbook and I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to work through these just so you can get an idea of what's contained on those pages okay and so I'll work my way down the list of each of these so we talk minimum guidelines shouldn't be seeing pajamas at school undergarments should be worn we shouldn't see undergarments worn as the regular clothes undergarments is actually designed or excuse me defined in the handbook um any reference to gangs anything that we could say that's and a lot of times too that one especially with the help of our of our sros and local police departments can Define that for us so we do education on that and
101work through those safety procedures but it is defined in there that way the piece you see on there of uh the next bullet not include defamatory writing obscene language symbols images reference to tobaccos drugs alcohol that's actually in reference to an Arizona State Statute that one and then the next one the same way must not display anything that would just if you displaying anything on your clothes it could be an illegal um any type of illegal property or anything that they have on them that you cannot possess at school hoods are not to be worn at class or it could be that a staff member is asking you to take it off uh when you're in in the classroom and then clothing that should be adequately covering the full range of movement without the undergarment
102showing I'll continue um the accessories and personal items okay and these are things that they may have that are more physical in nature that could be a safety uh concern that could cause anything to themselves or others you could see things like and some of them might not be a safety but could be involved in the safety app measurement of a student or what they're doing to learn in the room it's like for example sunglasses being worn inside sometimes there's medical situations and we understand that but we're talking in general here uh Spike jewelry chains um long belts anything that could be used in the wrong way Mass can be can be worn but they're not to be worn in any way if they're for a health purpose that's fine but not to be done
103is a way to cover their entire face so I would use examples like Halloween time and things like that where if a kid had an entire cover we'll see that and we have to provide instructions to students around that time of year but at any time you can't wear anything that would be distracted we didn't know who you are uh the accessory accessory can be confiscated by the administration or the staff member and the site administrators can determine if hats or headgear allowed so that one is reiterated under that particular item then you get into some of the specifics about clothing here um so you're going to see these three as I run through these next three slides are very much defined of the shirts the pants and then the shoes shirts and tops so
104shirts should not include spaghetti straps halter backless strapless off the shoulder tops meaning no straps as well cutting down the far end of the back or under the arms front of exposure as it's red there so they do Define what that is in there and that's a specific item in our in our handbook second one there exposing any part of the midriff undergarments when sitting and we know that we talk about midriff as far as the short shirts and then obviously must not be see-through ripped or torn I do want to point out on the top one too will we say that we're also talking about that could be the type of tank top that could be worn that has a very large undercut on it as well pants shorts bottoms um this next one
105is anything that could be exposing their backside or when they're sitting or standing extending of a reasonable length um that second one there any undergarment that could be um could be allowing that them to be not be able to function in the proper way of being able to sit and it's exposing their undergarments and then finally it talks about spandex in the form of types of pants or bottoms must not be see-through so those are these are pieces that I reiterate these are listed in the currently in the handbook okay and then finally the shoes we say that shoes need to be worn I think you would see that you know pretty much anywhere we talk about shoes uh being you know needing to be wore to school uh clothes shoes toe shoes for physical
106education is listed as well so a kid is not coming into into PE trying to perform in sandals we obviously because they get hurt and then slippers should not be worn to school and I think that kind of aligns to the to the pajama one so that's the way it's listed what could be some of those violation the consequences to these um these are these are the three things that we have identified that we have identified as the ways to deal with this um depending on those particular types of violations a lot of times during the beginning of a school year it would be an education time and then addressing it so you might ask that student to maybe uh changing the clothing that could be provided by the school sometimes that's something could be
107provided or changing if they have clothes to change into um turning that inappropriate clothing Inside Out has been done and also having clothing brought to the school if that's approved by the administration so if they could be bringing it in you know having it delivered but again you wouldn't want to do that on a daily basis so that's why the consequence piece to it is listed in there that that can be given by the administration if the dress code violation continues so there is Avenues to do that as a due process piece so really getting into the nuts and bolts of this um you know assessing Where We Are and I think that's why this item came before us is is an opportunity to talk about that and so as we launched into this year
108we felt it was important to establish more communication on the importance of dress code does it mean that we wouldn't still need to entertain what needs to be maybe adjusted or updated within the handbook so that could be a conversation and I'll get to that in a second but really starting this year it was important and we started off from a district level making sure that communication was sent out to parents um then we provided due process information to the schools that they could utilize schools then we were going into classrooms they have an opportunity to review it with their students being done either in a home room or a third hour in high school or things like that where you get you get a chance to review what the practice is with the student
109uh message is being sent home as well from a local campus um the the other part is is that you'll see that third bullet and some of these are things that need to then continue with what kind of training and working with local administrators we need to do to how to enforce and build a dress code culture and when we say that it's a positive culture we want students to feel comfortable at school and knowing that it's a place that they you know it's a learning environment that they're coming to as well but that they know that that's um that they know what the expectations are um and obviously that involves our parents and the community in that aspect and in the long run assessing the number of violations on each campus regularly so that's
110something that we are going to be paying attention to now is what's happening with dress code and when do you need to address it right now it's hot so a lot of times you're seeing right now that the kids I mean it's kids will wear jackets and then the jackets Come Off because they're wearing something that may be underneath that's not appropriate so they can shift it between that but a lot of times in the winter you see them more covered up so you'll see that change and when we get into the spring we see the adjustment again and that's not it's pretty obvious but that opportunity for us to assess where we're at continuously throughout the year what we're doing and how we're reminding on our campuses and working with our parents and Community
111but I think most important is our last bullet there is um we we feel that also is in this process we need to look at how can we form a committee to begin reviewing and updating this dress code policy I've been working uh closely with Kevin cashatt in the student services office I've asked him to be working closely with the campuses in the initial part of the year we've all been doing that as you know as assessing as from our end what we've seen on campuses uh going out there and visiting the schools early on but we feel like at this point now too is that we can do these things but we still need to come back to and look at forbing a committee and looking at how we can review the current dress
112code practices what's in the handbook providing updates and where we want to go from here so if we feel like there needs to be updates to it if we also feel like we need to talk about how we are actually enforcing and making sure it happens on our campuses as well so the start was to get to really go after it hard you know and make sure that we're communicating it out and then we can continue that conversation as far as as moving that dress code so I'm going to stop there and I'll be open to questions and what you'd like to uh discuss regarding that thank you Mr musee I feel like it's important to have this conversation you know I I think we've gotten very lacks with our enforcement of dress code and
113for me as a teacher when I had kids who came to me at one o'clock in the afternoon and I dress code them parents were not happy well it's one o'clock in the afternoon why are you just saying something now well I just saw your kid now when my kids had five other teachers through that day and nobody's dress coded them and it's a clear very clear the shorts keep getting shorter the talks keep getting skimpier and and even for gentlemen too um you know Trends are chaining for changing for gentleman's clothing and some things are inappropriate also I think it's important to address those and for our male employees who don't want to address a female it's super easy to find your female buddy and say hey I got so and so in my
114first hour can you come dress code her or for the lady say hey I got so and so can you come dress code them or talk to your administrators because it's it's I feel like this is an issue and if we keep if we let kids get away with just some of the small things they're going to think they can get away with the bigger things and just to continue that focus on behavior and learning I think it's important to make sure that we go back to actually looking at kids and dress coding them but I also think it's a good idea to have a conversation about some other things that are in the dress code I mean as a college student didn't we all wear pajamas to campus at some point I'm you know
115if a kid's wearing PJ pants that's more appropriate than a student who's wearing a halter top so I I think it might warrant a conversation how we got to this point because it's it's really gotten like way out of control where it's not even a matter of um you know way way back in the day and I understand changing the times this might not be a thing anymore but way back in the day it was where if you were going to wear leggings those were considered undergarments which I never agreed with because they're not undergarments but the rule was you can't wear leggings unless you're going to wear a top that covers your bottom now that's out the window which whatever I mean again I that might be something everyone things change I get that
116my big thing is it's not a matter of like oh your shirt doesn't come all the way down it's like you're half your shirt's gone and these young ladies are just walking on these campuses with very little material on their top and and how no one sees that as like Michelle steffen's point how does that how do we get to the point to where these kids are able to go their whole day or even through the front Gates and nobody stops them and I don't even necessarily buy the well male teachers may not want to comment on female students and female students or teachers may not want to comment on male students but I was standing with Dr crotto and it was just a simple don't wear that shirt anymore okay and it was like
117you know you didn't have to say exactly what the issue was she knew what the issue was you know and and way back in the day as well it used to be one particular School in our district used to have clothes that said dress coded on the top and people said oh that humiliates kids we can't do that some of these outfits they should be humiliated walking out their front door wearing those so I mean having a shirt that says dress coated on it I mean I don't know if we go back to that if that's legal I have no idea but I'll tell you what it was pretty effective because they didn't like going back to class with that on their shirt but I mean the point is whatever we do I don't think
118it's going to have to be like a conversation or we need to move toward it some of these things just have to stop right away you know whether it's like you call the parent and they either come right then or the kid does the rest of their work in the office for the day I don't know what the answer is but it's distracting for some kids you know to be sitting next to a student who is half clothed or or dressed inappropriately in some other way I don't know how we got here but that's our fault that we allowed it to get to this point just as much as it is the kids and the parents fault for allowing their child to leave the house and maybe some parents don't know what their kids leave
119and I get that parents have to be at work super early and they may not have no idea someone purchases the clothing but we weekends are different than school I also understand that but all I know is we send the handbook out we used to have parents sign off on that they read it but it's our fault that we keep allowing it to happen because we're not doing anything to stop it or a lot of our buildings aren't and we need to figure out how like what we're going to do like now like I even want to know like in a superintendent update in the coming weeks what we've done to address it moving forward I don't want to wait until a dress code committee comes together and we figure it out because it's just
120it's just out of hand and once we get there I think we need to have a clear understanding of how we're not going to get back to this point again because it's like we can't get back here it's it's very bad I mean I'm not I'm not shocked by a lot of things but some of the things that I've been seeing on some of these students not okay for school not okay I think any time around public but not not okay for school when you can't have other students who might be distracted by their classmate and I agree with Michelle and two I'd rather some kid come to school in pajamas then at least they're covered then coming to school with half of a shirt on yes Madam president board member Pritchard um the uh
121the the first aspect I wanted to state to that because I know you said how we've gotten to where we are um I would always say that that comes with expectations and the expectations that you establish and where where you want those to go at the beginning of the year so I don't believe that in starting and I and I don't know how far back I could go to this point I've asked you know some of that piece that I've looked at that and talked to obviously talked to uh you know within cabinet on this on this and other administrators what have we been sending out prior to this like what did we do to start the year of communication so that parents know what the expectation is before school starts what did you do
122in the beginning of the year to review the policy and practice in the classrooms with students and on the campus so that kids know and then how did you go about actually holding them accountable as you went forward a big part of this when you say setting expectations is is that and this is this is something that I believe strongly in and I know um the administrators do as well is that you you're not it's not going to be any good if your staff is not helping to enforce it and I know that that was that was mentioned earlier how did a kid get through the entire day your staff has to own the expectations of the of the campus just as much as the administration so that's that's our that's what we've started this
123year off on is saying that that's an important piece you're right now what happens after that so you can you begin that way and and much of that when I say conversation conversations with students could be on the first day when they show up or whatever and you're making it like you're making them make the change there and maybe there's not a consequence to it or anything else but there is a due process to that piece and there are schools that do hand out shirts sometimes they're PE shirts or other things like that I don't know about the actual putting that print on but you could we have that ability those are elements where you're saying that that's not acceptable to wear that on the campus so um you know I don't I don't want
124to pin it to anything maybe there was in the last few years that element of how schools had shut down and then started and maybe there was something that happened within there that you know that things just didn't keep going in that way of saying there's an expectation but we can set an expectation that's where we've started this year and and Dr Kota was very clear with us on that that we will make sure that we make that message clear to our parents and our families and our students we went over that it's part of our uh getting back all of our parent acknowledgment forms it is an expectation it's not it's not an option and then it's up to us to then to look at what's happening with that and to assess it and
125to come back to that and see what's happening so when we're out on campuses we're making the visits having the conversations with our with our principals and our assistant principals what are we doing to ensure that that's happening on the campus one other thing really quick that I noticed when I read through it and I don't know if this is paraphrased or if it's actually out of the handbook on the page about the purse accessories and personal items the last bullet side administrators can determine if hats or headgear are allowed students shall remove their hat or headgear when requested to do so by staff does that mean then that when the Pledge of Allegiance or the national anthem is on they're not required to remove their hats unless it is a religious headpiece or something
126like that Madam president board member Pritchard uh the the hat is still expected uh you know during that kind of uh when you talk about the Pledge of Allegiance I mean that isn't that is something that is an expectation at the school that they would remove their hat um that you know so so when you get into that piece of the Hat the hood and everything else that would be an expectation it's not defined there we don't have it defined in the handbook that way it's just when you say they can they can determine if it's allowed or not and then they shall remove get the requested it doesn't really it doesn't really give this was written this was written primarily for while the while the instruction is going on in the classroom when kids
127have it on and you can't see what they're you know the fact that they could be asleep or other things like that or a kid that pulls their hood or the fact that there's you know the element of a kid could be distracted doing something else um by hiding behind that but it was it was written for the instructional side of things that's how that piece was written I see maybe just something to consider absolutely when your committee gets together is to firm that language up as it pertains to National Anthem or pledge because as it reads if someone like refused to take their hat off you wouldn't be able to cite them under the um the dress code and the handbook because it really doesn't specify it says it's up to the administrator just
128something to think about absolutely for when we get up to that point but because I would hope that that would be you know non-negotiable thank you um just looking through this as far as the the current dress code standards this is specific to students correct yes and do we have standards for staff as well yes we do in writing yes how do they compare I would refer over to Dr polling for that piece but we did have just as a quick board member Des Moines we did have conversation just as an aspect of what how does that we did have a just some casual conversation Dr pulling could respond to that much better than I can thank you yes Madam president uh member Densmore and board um yes those are sent out annually and it's
129part of the um package in the mou it comes from a memo from the superintendent they're very similar to the student expectations I I don't have the verbiage with me right now but they're very similar okay with that with some of these standards with the you know the spaghetti straps the the short shorts midriffs how is it that we hold that we at least in writing hold our students to these standards when many of our district purchased athletic uniforms do not even come close to these standards just something to think about as we go through that um yes Madam president board member Densmore I as I'm looking at some of the the pieces that you're talking about and and I I know that when you start to Define like maybe specifically with within there because
130they talk about what that looks like but as a I'm thinking of a right now I'm thinking of the aspect of a tank top there is language in here that try that attempts to Define and it could be more clearly defined um what what the cut might be and what that should be like or the the size of a of a strap there has been large and you know very Broad and strict interpretation to that but I think we could Define that within there to show what's acceptable because the athletic uniform is Def is designed to be an appropriate type of you know um uniform within that performance and what they're doing so then we would say is that appropriate on the on the campus if they were wearing something similar I I don't believe
131and I would say that'd be a great conversation I don't believe that the writings of of what you see here I think this is talking to the extreme of what you might see like within because we say like a kid is in the swim team we know they're wearing right so we know that the uniform fits I think people are swimming on any of our campuses anyway but they're correct but I didn't even matter representing that as well so I I would say though that that that competition of what the school approves for a uniform so I don't think that was the intention but I think we could definitely say you know make language to say that hey uniforms that are provided appropriate to the sport that are approved those are those obviously fit those
132guidelines this is for the learning environment here right but I think even like maybe on a spirit day or you know a I don't know homecoming Friday where everyone is in their uniforms during the school day sure I don't think we're going to have any of our swimmers and their Speedos correct you know but we would have a cheer or Palm that's maybe potentially exposing their midriff and the rear end hanging out during class that there is definite potential I've seen it so I'm just putting that out there for thoughts on this going forward um but I also just want to mention you know I don't think that we're holding some of our staff members to the same standards in looking at this and I know that you know as we say in the stores
133out there you know it's so hard to find Bermuda you know length shorts for girls and you know and not getting the booty shorts right well it's the same for women too I mean grown women it's so hard to find a pair of pants without holes in it you know a shirt that actually covers your waist it's ridiculous meaning you know it's like we're having to shop in the granny section you know but so I get it for our parents out there I get it for our staff out there it's difficult because Society is changing but it doesn't necessarily mean that we need to modify our standards to society those are my thoughts I just have a comment too I know that everybody's you know wants everybody fully clothed and they're okay with Pajamas I'm
134not okay with Pajamas um I think our students should set their standards a lot higher than coming to school in pajamas these children are getting ready for the future they should learn to dress for the future that's just my my only opinion thank you Madam president members of the board I'd just like to close this out by saying we we have some work to do on this dress code that is apparent we have started that process and it's not only the process of communication and the process of getting that out we've had parent comments that they appreciate what we're doing and bring in awareness and focusing on it we will continue to do that but it's also a saying that goes back to what gets inspected gets respected so it's our job to make sure
135that we are inspecting our dress code and making sure it is uh operating the way we need to we have some work to do on it and we will do that so just want to close with that and and go on the record to say I did not wear pajama pants to college thank you Dr Credo were you in a suit and tie [Laughter] thank you we will move on to item H1 Dr crotto thank you madam president uh we have some exciting appointments tonight great presentations now we're on to the exciting appointments and Dr polling will lead us through the recommendation for Director of Finance thank you Dr crota Madam president members of the board Administration is proud director recommend a position of Director of Finance to Francie Wolfe Bauman for the assignment in
136the 23-24 school year she is a bachelor's in science and hotel and restaurant management from Northern Arizona University she has extensive educational experience including being in Dysart since 2008 and she's currently our accounting coordinator she'll receive a salary and benefits commensurate with the position her education and experience her resume is attached for Board review and I'll stand for any questions thank you Dr pulling polling okay I move that we approve the appointment of Francie wolf Bowman Bowman Bauman Bauman Bauman thank you as Director of Finance second motion made by Crystal Chapman seconded by Don Densmore congratulations next we will move on to item H2 Dr Credo thank you madam president uh tonight we continue with our recommendation for an interim Elementary School principal and Dr polling will continue with this item thank you Dr crota
137Madam president members of the board Administration is recommending the addition of an interim Elementary School principal position in order to provide appropriate coverage additionally Administration is recommending the appointment of Rick candy to fill the interim position for the remainder of the 23-24 school year at El Mirage elementary school he is currently the assistant principal there and actually he's been in Dysart even longer since 2004. and he'll receive salary benefits commensurate with his position education and experience his resume is attached for Board review I'll stand for any questions thank you Mr Haney will you also dye your hair fun colors [Laughter] that's funny thank you with us I will move to approve the addition of interim Elementary School principal position and appointment of Rick Haney as interim Elementary School principal for the remainder of the 2023-2024
138school year motion made by Crystal Chapman seconded by Christine Pritchard motion carries let's give him a congratulations thank you congratulations we will move on to H3 thank you madam president uh tonight uh last week or last week last board I mean you established an interim uh principle at Willow Canyon therefore opening a spot for an assistant principal and tonight we're here for a recommendation to fill that interim assistant principle and Dr polling will take us through that thank you Dr Crow Madam president members of the board Administration is recommending the addition of an interim High School assistant principal in order to provide appropriate coverage additionally Administration is recommending the appointment of Tim Madrid to fill the interim position for the remainder of the 23-24 school year at Willow Canyon High School to Madrid has extensive
139administrative experience and recently retired as a longtime principal in tossing Union High School District you will participate in the phase retirement program and will be employed by ESI you'll receive salary commensurate with the position his experience in education his resume is also attached for Board review and thank you thank you Dr polling any questions okay I moved to approve the addition of an interim High School assistant principal position an appointment of Tim Madrid as interim High School assistant principal for the remainder of the 2023-2024 school year second motion made by Crystal Chapman seconded by Don Densmore thank you let's give him a congratulations motion carries next we will move on to H4 Dr Cordo thank you madam president members of the board cabinet and guests uh tonight I bring to you an opportunity to talk
140about safety some more and increase our safety footprint across the district this district has been very focused on school safety uh as you've seen in in our presentations along with uh conversations we've had an executive session about school safety and we continue to be focused I can tell you to date it's six days in every school has have an audit on their safety procedures and we've done a spectacular job of going out and doing that with cabinet obviously Mr Jaeger and Mr kashat have done a great job but we continue to have more and more placed on school safety so tonight I bring to you a recommendation of of adding a position to our safety right now it's one person doing all the audits doing all the safety checks running all the processes um and
141it's becoming a lot for one person to do all those things and be very effective so tonight I bring to you an opportunity to add a director of safety operations job description uh the to you for approval uh this will basically um create a Safety and Security Department within our district that director will run the Safety and Security of the district and all the resources available that go into that I feel it's very important it's um really on the Forefront of of safety I don't think you see that in a lot of districts right now but we do have 13 sros we have security guards we're asking to do audits safety checks they go monitor drills and to do all that I think we need to expand our footprint and do it even more effectively
142than we're already doing they're doing an amazing job but as you know and as you've seen there's a lot to it and to continue to focus on it I think is very important because we know that without safety if our kids don't feel safe and our parents don't feel safe that learning is not going to occur first and foremost it is the first and foremost thing it is on everybody's mind and it's that important so tonight I ask you for the approval of a director of safety operations and to the districts so I'll stand for any questions that you may have thank you do we have any questions just a comment um I have spoken with a lot of other board members and also other District employees from up from outside of our district and
143um to Dr coto's point I think everyone is taking safety very seriously but in my opinion I don't think anyone is taking it to the level that Dysart has and is and is looking to to grow even further and I'm just truly grateful for the focus on safety from Dr crota an olive cabinet and I'm I'm truly grateful to see this and um thank you you're welcome so with this in essence kind of create its own Department we have our own safety department I feel like right now it's kind of part of the student services would this create its own entity Madam president that is correct it creates its own entity so you'll have a Safety and Security Department with this director of safety operations running that department so in essence it will become a
144department right now of two um and it will still fall under Mr musee as overseeing the apartment the department I think that's incredible having our own Safety and Security Department it's it's very helpful because as Ms Densmore stated safety is at the Forefront of everybody's mind and we want our community to know that we are committed to our student and our staff safety so with that any other questions yep um so right now the director of student services is involved in in the safety piece correct because when I first saw this I was thinking the LA and I've been worried about this for a while not that he said anything about it but I just worry for him I don't want to burn out Mr Yeager like he's just we don't want to lose him
145and I want to make sure he feels supported as well so initially I'm thinking okay we're gonna have this other person it too but then we're taking like IT director of student services are they going to still have any hand in this where they're going to be able to help support at least until they're off and running otherwise it's still just going to be a two-man show again I'm Madam president member Pritchard absolutely they work hand in hand they will continue to work hand in hand as well as the expectation is safety is not just a two-person Department safety is everybody's job in this District to Cabinet to our teachers to administrators it is everybody's job to make sure this campus is safe so my expectation is that everybody Works hand in hand if they
146need help inspecting if they're checking doors if they're doing those things everybody does that it's not just leaving on these two people but they will still work with Mr kashat hand in hand because he does a lot of the student discipline and the behaviors so that naturally intertwines and they're both report to Mr musee so it's perfect matchup okay because I mean I get what you're saying of course it takes everybody but what I'm really talking about is a day-to-day workload of those Audits and all the things that do just fall on Mr Yeager and um so they're still gonna they're still gonna have that piece yes and if they're going to feel the additional support basically by batting this position yes ma'am they will all right thank you questions comments okay I moved to
147approve the department restructure plan as presented motion made by Crystal Chapman seconded by Christine Pritchard motion carries we will move on to i1 do we have any requests for future agenda items okay Ms Grant um sure excuse me excuse me necessarily a huge presentation but we're at the beginning of school year and I'd like to know how many teachers we currently have on staff I'd like to know how many vacancies we have by grade and by subject matter please I'm president member grant that will be at the next meeting it is scheduled and we will make sure it's by grade and subject matter as requested but it is scheduled for next meeting session High School level I mean that's more so the middle school but and I know it's a moving Target and things change
148very quickly he'll be hiring five more between now and then but just just an idea of what where we stand on vacancies mostly the vacancies please you got it easily done I just want to clarify because maybe I might want to add something to it so when you say the vacancies for the teachers could we maybe get it just for all you know staff like what our vacancy rates are for different all the categories absolutely you want support staff everything Administration support staff that is easily done we will include that in the report as well as our student enrollment and and those things that's coming in the report next bus drivers have been there for really solid since we made those movements but it's coming up that isn't scheduled for the next meeting already thank
149you thank you thank you anyone else okay item J1 I moved to adjourn motion made by Crystal Chapman seconded by Joe Grant I'm gonna vote now I'm gonna vote Yes I know did you vote no motion carries we are adjourned